Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request on Sunday for a presidential pardon – submitted five years into his corruption trial, nearly a decade into the investigations, and after years of vowing to fight for full acquittal – was dramatic but not impulsive.
The petition delivered to President Isaac Herzog was polished, deliberate, and clearly prepared long in advance. Yet the timing still jolted the political system.
Netanyahu had always insisted he would never seek clemency for crimes he says he did not commit. He would fight until full acquittal. Now, suddenly, he is asking for a pardon before a verdict, before a conviction, before the judicial
process runs its course.
Why now? Why this week rather than six or 26 months ago, or a year from now? What changed?
To understand the timing, it is instructive to look at three calendars running in parallel: the diplomatic calendar in Washington, the legal calendar in Jerusalem, and the domestic political calendar revolving around the haredi draft bill, which began working its way through the Knesset this week.
Together, they create a rare convergence – a moment in which Netanyahu appears to believe a pardon can be framed not as a personal escape, but as a national necessity.
Trump is personally, politically invested in Netanyahu's fate
Start with the diplomatic calendar in Washington. The most immediate external context for the pardon request is the United States – specifically, US President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu is dealing with a US president who is personally, emotionally, and politically invested in his fate.
Trump has never hidden his view that Netanyahu should be pardoned. He said it publicly in the Knesset in October, and a month later spelled it out further in a letter to Herzog, urging clemency.
No previous administration has interfered so directly in Israel’s internal legal process. Trump did, and for Netanyahu, that created a moment he could not ignore.
Netanyahu pointed to this in his pardon request, noting that Israel faces “historic challenges and opportunities” that require a fully engaged prime minister – not one spending multiple days a week in court.
The subtext was unmistakable: with Trump pushing to expand the Abraham Accords and reshape the Middle East, Israel needs a leader with the time, bandwidth, and authority to be the president’s partner – not one tied up three days a week under cross-examination.
This is a narrative Netanyahu has not used before: not “I must and will clear my name,” but “Israel cannot afford to lose this moment.”
Trump reinforced that sense of timing within hours. Netanyahu spoke to him immediately after submitting the request and promptly announced that the president had invited him to Washington.
The choreography was unmistakable. Netanyahu was positioning himself not as a defendant seeking mercy at the feet of Israel’s president but as a statesman about to engage in a high-stakes diplomatic mission with a US president who believes Israel’s interests – and America’s – are better served with Netanyahu working beside him and unencumbered by his trial.
This goes a long way toward explaining the timing: Netanyahu’s pardon request is backed by the most sympathetic US president he could hope for – one who is not only supportive but actively pressing for clemency.
For Netanyahu, this may be the one diplomatic moment in which a pardon can be framed not as personal relief but as a strategic necessity: Trump is eager to make dramatic regional moves, and Netanyahu – pointing to Trump’s letter as political cover – is positioning himself as the indispensable partner to help execute them.
But Washington explains only part of the timing.
Netanyahu claims his trial disrupts work as 'history beckons'
The second part lies in the courtroom. For most of the trial, while the prosecution presented its case, Netanyahu could largely continue governing; he was not required to attend most hearings. His lawyers handled the witnesses; he handled the country. That changed in late 2024 when he took the stand.
Suddenly, three days a week were consumed by preparing his testimony, sitting through hours of cross-examination, and coordinating with his legal team. And this year, according to the pardon request submitted by his lawyers, the court accelerated the pace even further because of a personal circumstance affecting one of the judges, leaving Netanyahu in court for much of the week at precisely the moment, he argues, Israel needs him most.
This is the part Netanyahu now emphasizes publicly. In a video interview Wednesday for the New York Times DealBook Summit, he described the trial as a “witch hunt,” dismissed the charges as trivial, and explained that sitting in court eight hours a day, three days a week, is incompatible with leading a nation facing historic opportunities and dangers.
“I have a few other things to do,” he said. “History beckons.” He argued that the trial has become “a joke,” that “taxi drivers make jokes about it,” and that if he were not prime minister, perhaps he could “continue for fun” – but Israel cannot spare its leader for that long.
Yet there is an inconsistency he cannot escape. In 2021, when petitioners to the High Court argued that a sitting prime minister could not possibly stand trial and run the country simultaneously, Netanyahu’s lawyers insisted the exact opposite. “The fact that part of the prime minister’s time is not in his hands does not indicate an inability to fulfill his duties,” they wrote. Netanyahu had the experience and capacity to juggle both “without any difficulty.”
Explosive issues in Israeli society bubble to the surface
And then there is the third calendar – the domestic one, the most combustible of all.
On the same day Netanyahu submitted the pardon request, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee advanced the haredi draft bill. Since October 7, no issue is more explosive in Israeli society.
The haredi parties insist that a law essentially exempting their youth from military service must pass immediately; they see it as existential. Much of the public sees the exact opposite: that, at this moment, continuing blanket exemptions is immoral, indefensible, and unsustainable.
After much delay, it is into this political maelstrom that Netanyahu is walking, and he wants to do so from a position of maximum stability, not personal vulnerability.
This is the crux: the pardon request is not – as many have suggested – a smoke screen meant to distract the public from the draft debate; Israelis will not so easily be diverted from such a hot-button issue. Rather, it is meant to stabilize Netanyahu before he confronts the most destabilizing political issue he faces.
A prime minister who is spending three days a week in court, under cross-examination, will have a hard time navigating a crisis this raw, this symbolic, this emotional. And it is here that one can see the outline of a coalition barter – not an explicit quid pro quo, but a convergence of needs that amounts to the same thing.
The haredi parties urgently need the draft law passed; it is their defining goal. They are largely indifferent to Netanyahu’s legal fate, but they need him in office long enough to secure the law.
Netanyahu, in turn, needs the haredi parties to keep the coalition steady while he maneuvers for a pardon.
A collapse of the government now would make the pardon request politically toxic because it would undermine the very narrative on which Netanyahu is basing the pardon request.
Netanyahu is arguing that he is seeking a pardon not for himself, but for the greater good: to heal divisions, preserve national unity, and seize diplomatic opportunities with Trump.
But if his own coalition were to fall apart at the very moment he is asking for clemency, the optics would flip instantly. Instead of acting out of national responsibility, he would look like a prime minister scrambling to secure legal immunity before losing power. The request would appear less like a bid to stabilize the country and more like a last-minute attempt to stabilize himself.
Herzog, facing a public already suspicious of political motives, would come under immense pressure not to legitimize what critics would call an effort to “escape” the consequences of a collapsing government. In that environment – with a government that fell and an election campaign underway – a pardon would look less like a tool of national reconciliation and more like a personal shield. And that is precisely the perception Netanyahu is trying to avoid.
This is why the timing matters. The haredi conscription bill and the pardon request are not parallel events; they are intertwined. Netanyahu is advancing an unpopular bill to preserve coalition stability, and the haredi parties are providing that stability as he seeks to resolve his legal issues. Each side’s survival needs reinforce the other’s – call it mutual assured survival.
Put all this together – the Washington window, the courtroom pressure, the political volatility – and the timing becomes clearer. Netanyahu acted now because this was the moment when all the pressures and opportunities converged: a sympathetic US president actively pressing for clemency; a trial entering its most dangerous phase; and a domestic confrontation over the haredi draft bill approaching with the force of a storm.
For Netanyahu, this is the rare moment in which he could still frame a pardon as something done not for himself, but for the good of the country. The moment is brief – the window is narrow – so he stepped in to seize it.